At Durham Friends Meeting on November 19, 2023, Leslie Manning read this poem, “Taking Sides,” by Rabbi Irwin Keller, to open worship:

message given at Durham Friends Meeting, November 5, 2023

Dear Friends,   It is my privilege to bring the message this morning and my hopes are that it will bring blessing and closure in some manner to us this day, in this season of the drawing back of nature’s life force to be contained and conserved in the darkness, preparing for another season of growth in yet another time. I asked to bring the message today for two reasons. One, because there was an empty line on our calendar for message bringers, but more importantly  because this message has been growing inside of me for at least two years, perhaps even more.

I have captured little thoughts and inspirations from the life and lives we share as a corporate body and of course from my personal prayers, meditations and conversations with the invisible realms, with the angels and spiritual guides, with my relationship with God.

This message comes out now following our last Sunday’s Meeting for Grieving as a continuation of the deep need to honor and grieve all those we have said goodbye to over the last three years and also all that has been lost within our community as a result of the Corona virus pandemic.  I want to speak to all of this because our wounding from it is deep, and because it continues to reverberate throughout the present experience we share. I am mindful that not all has been lost, and there have been gains of new growth and adaptation throughout this period as well. BUT, I want in this moment  in time to give attention and voice, here and now, to what we have lost. To give voice to that which causes us to sorrow, here, in our small beloved community and beyond! Because our small, beloved community exists in the larger world and we recognize how our lives are affected by tragedies around us. That which we sorrow after is the physical, warm, flesh and blood and bone presence of our friends. Those who we sorrow over have vanished from our sight and we are filled with sadness while we continue to yearn for the, while we long for their presence among us. The spaces that they inhabited are now hollow……….. We no longer feel the comfort of their tenderness, or the joy of their laughter. We no longer bask in the light of their eyes and the music of their voices, each one’s unique and distinct personality and the vibrance  of their spirits. What makes these losses even more poignant is that they are not flesh and blood family members. They and we are a body of like- minded spirits who come together in relationship because we share in the common desire to seek after God, we come together to worship the Divine in all life and in each other , to lift one another into that light and to be led by that life and fullness. So, it is right and good that we suffer the absence of their warmth and companionship and shed our tears and feel the gnawing in our throats when their memories rise within us.

I personally grieve a lot of life that has been missed since we stopped meeting here in this holy space, our Meetinghouse. And I will say it again, how I ache over missing our connectivity by not gathering near to one another for two long years. My soul aches terribly when I think about the slow deaths of aged ones who in their isolation during the lockdown, were buried  by the weight of loneliness and lack of human touch. I grieve over the loss of our young families and the precious growing years of our youth, never to be recovered. And I grieve over the misunderstandings and hard and difficult differences among us that were only magnified when we couldn’t sit down with one another in attempts to work things through. I grieve the loss of normalcy and the strange, cold distancing that kept us afraid of one another getting close. I the reality and trauma of mask wearing, robbing us of seeing each other’s facial expressions and smiles, and I grieve that weddings and funerals and birthdays and graduations were not celebrated as is our custom in the life of our Meeting community. I grieve and regret the disruption of our lives together and many who are no longer with us.’ But,’ you might say, we survived and we came through and we and we and we……………………………………………. And that is true, but today’s message is not about survival, is not about adapting, it is not about how we came through. As I said at the beginning, this message is about loss. Let us allow one another to grieve our losses, pay them the attention they deserve, and then and only then, in the space that follows look to and acknowledge all that we have survived and how we have come through.

When my mother died eleven years ago, I remember the sense of losing the biggest part of myself, that beautiful woman who brought me into the world and was my anchor here spiritually and physically. Suddenly, she was gone, no more laughter and shared moments, no more going to the grocery store with her or for her, no more dinners and sleepovers and family gatherings, no more trips to PA, or Vermont or Ohio. She was just gone- and her leave taking ripped away at the very fabric of life and time and purpose. I remember feeling such terrible loneliness and raw sadness going into the grocery store, knowing that I was not shopping for her anymore. It would come over me and permeate my whole self, such that I would feel like a little lost girl and could not wait to get out of there.

And so, it is with each one of us, missing the people who have gone on and are no longer with us.  Who have gone with their precious human forms, leaving with a little portion of our souls that go with theirs.

And so, here we are, still here, with each other, figuring out the new dance steps with fewer dancers remaining. Like survivors of a shipwreck holding tight to the flotsam of debris left floating on the sea, holding on for dear life to one another.

It becomes even stronger then, our need for one another. Our need to pray with one another and for each other. To bear up patiently and with deep kindness, the understanding that we are all surviving the pain and the losses, the trauma of our collective suffering on a grand scale. And that we carry the burden of grief and sorrow together.

I want to close now with the words of an amazing soul who was a poet, philosopher and artist. Born in 1883 and who lived till 1931. Kahlil Gibran, who  many know, for his seminal work,” The Prophet. “  It is one of my favorite works of spiritual writing which as of this year is 100 years old. It is a collection of poems in which innumerable people have found in them an expression of the deepest impulses of man’s heart and mind.

So I end this message with Gibran’s poem called, “On Joy and Sorrow”

Then a woman said, Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow.

And he answered:

Your joy is you sorrow unmasked.  And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.

And how else can it be?

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven? And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, made by the carver’s knife?

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful, look again in your heart, and you shall see that you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.” But I say unto you that they are inseparable. Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy. Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.

When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.

[Or, We’re Slipping Again into a Time of Religious War]

Message given at Durham Friends Meeting, November 12, 2023

It is tolerance that is on my mind this morning.  Tolerance isn’t one of the Testimonies of Friends, and perhaps it should not be so considered, but still it has an importance for Friends. 

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all of us agreed about everything?  Wouldn’t that be splendid – a harmony.  A peace, you might say.  I don’t mean we’d all agree about the little things, like which flavor of ice cream is best, or whether the Patriots are our favorite team. 

I mean wouldn’t it be great if we all agreed about the big questions like what is the proper name of God, or how should God be worshipped or what is sinful in the eyes of God and what is not.  Wouldn’t agreement on those matters be heavenly?  Surely in heaven there is nothing but agreement. 

Or would it?  Maybe you can think of some reasons this might not be so good.  Maybe you can think of reasons this would be hard to achieve without conflict or violence.  Humans can find it hard to agree with one another; that seems to be just the way we are.  Sometimes people try to force others to believe what they believe, to achieve that uniform harmony of belief.  And that conflict can be painful.  It can become religious war – war to achieve heaven on earth.    

Today, I’ve been thinking we are slipping again into a time of religious war – or something very like it.  Conflict, yes, but “religious”?  Is that the right word?  That may strike you as an odd thing to say.  In the United States many fewer people consider themselves religious than just a few decades ago.  The same is true in Europe and in much of Asia and Latin America. 

Nevertheless, around the world we have religious wars between Jews and Muslims.  Think about what’s happening in Gaza.  And we have religious wars between Shia and Sunni within Islam.  Think of the long struggles between Iran and Saudi Arabia for dominance in the world of Islam – struggles in which we are constantly being caught up.  These conflicts are heartbreaking. 

But I’m also finding myself thinking there is a possibility of religious war here in the United States.  Some of this mirrors those global conflicts, but more to the point it involves conflicts among Christians, and between some Christians and others who do not consider themselves religious at all. 

1648.  That’s a date I don’t imagine many of you ever think about.  It’s the year the great religious wars in Europe ended.  It was the conclusion of what we came to call the Thirty Years War, but it was really a war that lasted longer than that.

The Thirty Years War was a long, extremely bloody struggle to decide what was the one true religion – the one, true religion that everyone should believe and practice – to achieve that universal agreement bon big questions.  It was largely between Roman Catholics and Protestants, though sometimes also between different kinds of Protestants.  Each side tried to impose its understanding of the one true religion on everyone else.  Our understanding of sin.  Our understanding of baptism and communion.  Our understanding of marriage. 

This was an appalling war.  The International Red Cross estimates that between 4 and 12 million people lost their lives from combat, or from resulting disease or famine.  Perhaps 20% of the population of Europe died. 

The Thirty Years War ended in a stalemate, a very bloody stalemate.  Exhausted and appalled at the carnage, the various kings and princes and Dukes of Europe agreed that each country would have whatever religion its king or prince or duke decided, and that the various countries would no longer try to impose their religion on others.  These wars ended in 1648 with the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia. 

This wasn’t yet religious liberty as we know it today – the kind of religious liberty that we celebrate in the First Amendment.  After 1648 Kings could still impose the one true religion on those in their own country.  And they did. But they agreed not to try to impose across national borders. 

Nevertheless, it wasn’t many decades before countries began to agree that there wouldn’t be religious war within their own boundaries.  They began to agree that each person could worship God as he or she saw fit (or not worship at all).  They began to agree that governments wouldn’t say this is the right way, the only way allowed.  It wasn’t so far and so long from The Thirty Years War to the First Amendment, from the one true religion to religious liberty. 

Aren’t I talking politics here in Meeting?  Yes, but I’m also talking religion.  The beginnings of Quakerism are deeply connected to this search for religious liberty.  Remember we’re the religious group without a creed, without an authoritative statement of belief.  We’re a religious group whose beliefs and practices disturbed many people. 

Let’s come back to 1648, the Treaty of Westphalia.  It was just four years after that date that George Fox climbed Pendle Hill and had his epiphany: Christ would speak to him if he stilled himself to listen.  And that very same year Fox preached to over a thousand people at Firbank Fell beginning the movement we call Quakerism. 

The beliefs and practices of Quakers were deeply offensive to the leaders of the Church of England.  I think we can lose track of that.  Fox was imprisoned and more than once.  Dozens, hundreds of other Quakers were imprisoned.  Some died.  Why?  Because Quakers wouldn’t go the local Church of England church.  They wouldn’t take off their hats to nobility.  They used “thee and thou” with everyone.  They believed they didn’t need priests.  They wouldn’t swear oaths.  They wouldn’t recite the creeds of the Church of England.  They wouldn’t fight in wars.  They allowed women to preach.  All these upset people in the established church. 

In those first decades of Quakerism, it was perilous to be a Quaker.  It took secrecy or courage – or both.  Not until the Petition of Right, in 1685, was there even a modest measure of individual religious liberty in Britain.    

We all know the stories of people coming to the American colonies for religious liberty.  Often, however, they created communities where there was one true religion, their own, and they persecuted others.  In 1660, Mary Dyer was hanged in Boston, in Massachusetts Bay Colony, for repeatedly defying a Puritan law banning Quakers from the colony.

We might think those days are long in our past.  After all I’ve mostly been talking about the 17^th century.  But here in the 21^st century, some of our most difficult conflicts involve abortion, sexual orientation and gender identity, and attitudes toward those with different religious beliefs, Muslims or Jews or Sikhs.  We’ve come to call these “social issues,” but they are very much like religious ones.  They involve beliefs about “the right way to live.” These are conflicts fueled by strong beliefs about what is sinful and what is not:  like abortion, like sexual identity.  I fear we are slipping back into a time of religious war. 

We often talk about the religious freedom part of the 1^st Amendment to the Constitution as “Separation of church and state.”  Those aren’t the words of the Amendment, though.  The Amendment really has two parts.  It says there shall be “no establishment of religion.” That means no official church.  No one is compelled to have any particular beliefs or practices, and no church is given special status.

And the Amendment also says (this is the second part) that there shall be “no prohibiting the free exercise of religion.”  That means each person can have whatever beliefs they choose or use whatever worship practices they choose. 

“No establishment of religion” and “free exercise”.  Those two principals have defined what religious freedom has meant in the United States since our founding.  They are bookends.  And they are simple, aren’t they?  No, not really.  Both principles are open to a good deal of interpretation.  And we are finding ourselves again in a time when the current interpretations are being challenged. 

“Tolerance” is another way to talk about these two principles.  ‘You go your way and I’ll go mine.’  ‘You worship as you please and I’ll worship as I please.’  We can try to persuade one another, but we won’t try to coerce others into sharing our beliefs or our practices.  It’s a way to avoid conflict over deep beliefs.  “Tolerance” is a basis for living together with people with whom we disagree – with whom we disagree about the most important matters. 

“Tolerance” is a good thing, or so we’ve long thought.  Quakers have valued it because tolerance has allowed us to have our unusual practices without being thrown in jail.

We should recognize, however, that “tolerance” is a second-best solution.  Wouldn’t it be better if we all agreed?  Wouldn’t it be better if we all shared the same beliefs and practices?  Wouldn’t that be best?  I think we’d all rather live in harmony with people in a situation where no one did things that horrified or disgusted anyone else.  But is we cannot have that, tolerance is second best, and the best humans can achieve. 

Such harmony can be hard to achieve.  We found that out in the 17^th century in a very deadly, bloody war.  And it seems like some people are aching again for that first best solution: everyone agrees, and we use the law and coercion to insist that everyone agrees. 

Nevertheless, if we want everyone to agree, the only way to achieve that is likely through coercion, conflict and war.  Think about that when you hear someone say this or that is the only right way to live, or you hear someone say that this or that practice should be outlawed.  Think about that when you hear someone speak of the U.S. as “a Christian nation,” and men by that their own particular brand of Christianity. 

If we don’t want that, if we don’t want religious war, tolerance is the way to live together.  We’ve been here before.  Tolerance doesn’t mean we give up having our beliefs and our practices.  It simply means we give up trying to coerce others to follow our beliefs or our practices.  We can try to persuade people, but not coerce them.

As William Penn says, ““Let us then try what love can do to mend a broken world.”

Also posted on Riverview Friend

At worship on October 29, Tess Hartford read the following, from French priest Teilhard de Chardin:

When the signs of age begin to mark my body

(and still more when they touch my mind)

when the ill that is to diminish me or carry me 

 off strikes from without

or is born within me:

when the painful moment comes in which I 

 suddenly waken

to the fact that I am ill or growing old;

and above all at the last moment

when I feel that I am losing hold of myself

and am absolutely passive in the hands

of the great unknown forces that have formed me;

in all those dark moments, O God,

grant that I may understand that it is you

(provided only my faith is strong enough)

who are painfully parting the fibers of my being

in order to penetrate to the very marrow of my 

 substance

and bear me away within yourself.

   —Teilhard de Chardin

Message given at Durham Friends Meeting, October 15, 2023

Craig Freshley began his message by reading the latest version of a prayer he has been writing and rewriting for several years.

Creator,

Thank you for making the universe.
Thank you for making me a part of it.
Thank you for providing me with all that I need, and more.

You are the light upon me,
the heat within me,
and the time that carries me along.

I want to see straight and stand true,
notice miracles all around me,
always ready to receive, give, and forgive.

Help me detach from expectations.
Help me like me.
Help me do what’s light.

Here is a recording of the whole message — what he said about this prayer.

At Durham Friends Meeting on October 8, 2023, Ingrid Chalufour read Walking Together, a book the Meeting is distributing to teachers participating in our Social Justice Project. The book tells of the blessings that come from “walking together in a good way.”

ELDER DR. ALBERT D. MARSHALL is from the Moose Clan of the Mi’kmaw Nation, Eskasoni First Nation in Unama’ki-Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. A fluent speaker of Mi’kmaw, he has brought forth the concept of Etuaptmumk / Two-Eyed Seeing which honors the strengths of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous knowledges and ways of knowing for the benefit of all.

LOUISE ZIMANYI, who is of French-Canadian and Hungarian descent, lives as a guest in Tkaronto/Toronto, Treaty 13 territory. As a professor and researcher, she is co-learning from and with the Land and wise teachers, co-transforming early childhood pedagogy and practice.

EMILY KEWAGESHIG is an Anishnaabe artist and visual storyteller whose work captures the interconnection of life forms using both traditional and contemporary materials and methods. She creates artwork that highlights Indigenous knowledge and culture. Emily is from Saugeen First Nation in Ontario, Canada.